Republicans place their bets -for votes- on destroying Obamacare

Our TV commercials this election season make two things perfectly clear; this is a Republican stronghold and all politicians are betting that EVERYONE hates Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act). Every ad contains bragging that “I voted against Obamacare” χ amount of times. With all of this anti-Obamacare rhetoric it is hard to imagine that ANYONE actually wants that program.Obamacare is actually a watered down version of what this country really needs—which is universal health care. Obamacare may actually help insurance companies in the long run as people, who presently don’t have insurance, will be forced to buy it. Yet it is the first step in beginning to force insurance companies to insure those who are locked out of the system right now. That includes people who can’t get insurance for pre-conditions, such as those who have cancer or hepatitis C. And the largest group left out is poor people.I received an e-mail from Hadley Heath Manning, Health Policy Director, for Independent Women's Voice (another phony conservative front group). He starts by arguing over whether the increase in insured people is really because of Obamacare. They argue it might not be. Then:“Uninsured people have consistently cited cost as their number one deterrent to buying health coverage. And now ObamaCare is driving massive premium hikes; how is that supposed to help?”The answer to that is that is that Obamacare forces insurance companies to make affordable insurance available to people they haven’t wanted to cover. Under Obamacare they have to cover them.“We know ObamaCare is just plain wrong. We don’t think anyone should be forced to buy in to a bad deal, where premiums go up every year along with out-of-pocket costs. Even worse, the quality of care is likely to go down as doctors’ networks shrink and health plans are overwhelmed.”How do they know all of this will happen? It is all guess work.“We know that a better solution is a healthy and growing economy, where more American families have the chance to choose to buy the health insurance that suits them best.”To sum up what they said: “let’s just do nothing.” Conservatives love to talk about a better way—but what they really want is no change at all. They love the status quo and they just don’t care about poor people not having access to health care.“Approximately 245,000 deaths in the United States in the year 2000 were attributable to low levels of education…. 133,000 to individual-level poverty, 119,000 to income inequality, and 39,000 to area-level poverty.Overall, 4.5% of U.S. deaths were found to be attributable to poverty."As long as those who have insurance vote for Tea Party Republicans—those Republicans are happy. Tea Party Republicans don’t really want poor people to have health care. They seem to relish the thought that these people will die early.And these same Republicans are betting that most middle class people will buy into all the anti-Obamacare hype and vote for them due to their efforts to destroy Obamacare.

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Steve Otto is a free-lance writer, and political activist living near Wichita, KS. He authored of four books, "War on Drugs/ War on People"; "Memoirs Of A Drugged-up, Sex-crazed Yippie"; "Can You Pass the Acid Test?" and "I Am Pol Pot." He is a graduate of Wichita State University and has worked for The Clinton Daily Democrat and The St. Clair Courier, in Missouri. Since then he has written for newspapers, magazines and blogs.